Android – How to use external JARs in an Android project

androidbuild.gradleclass-libraryeclipse

I have created an Android project and added an external JAR (hessian-4.0.1.jar) to my project. I then added the JAR to the build path and checked it off in Order and Export.

Order and Export is ignored it seems, and all classes from the external JAR are missing at runtime.

Is there a trick to properly include the needed classes from an external JAR when building an Android application using the Eclipse plugin? I do not want to use ant or Maven.

Best Answer

For Eclipse

A good way to add external JARs to your Android project or any Java project is:

Create a folder called libs in your project's root folder
Copy your JAR files to the libs folder
Now right click on the Jar file and then select Build Path > Add to Build Path, which will create a folder called 'Referenced Libraries' within your project

By doing this, you will not lose your libraries that are being referenced on your hard drive whenever you transfer your project to another computer.

For Android Studio

If you are in Android View in project explorer, change it to Project view as below

Right click the desired module where you would like to add the external library, then select New > Directroy and name it as 'libs'
Now copy the blah_blah.jar into the 'libs' folder
Right click the blah_blah.jar, Then select 'Add as Library..'. This will automatically add and entry in build.gradle as compile files('libs/blah_blah.jar') and sync the gradle. And you are done

Please Note : If you are using 3rd party libraries then it is better to use transitive dependencies where Gradle script automatically downloads the JAR and the dependency JAR when gradle script run.

Ex : compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:9.4.0'

Read more about Gradle Dependency Mangement

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Eclipse – How to you speed up Eclipse

The three most influential factors for Eclipse speed are:

Using the latest version of Eclipse (2020-06 as on 26 June 2020)
Note that David Balažic's comment (July 2014) contradicts that criteria which was working six years ago:

The "same" workspace in Indigo (3.7.2) SR2 loads in 4 seconds, in Kepler SR2 (4.3.2) in 7 seconds and in Luna (4.4.0) in 10 seconds. All are Java EE bundles. Newer versions have more bundled plugins, but still the trend is obvious. (by "same" workspace I mean: same (additionally installed) plugins used, same projects checked out from version control).

Launching it with the latest JDK (Java 14 at the time of writing, which does not prevent you to compile in your Eclipse project with any other JDK you want: 1.4.2, 1.5, 1.6 older...)
```
  -vm jdk1.6.0_10\jre\bin\client\jvm.dll
```
Configuring the eclipse.ini (see this question for a complete eclipse.ini)
```
  -Xms512m
  -Xmx4096m
  [...]
```

The Xmx argument is the amount of memory Eclipse will get (in simple terms). With -Xmx4g, it gets 4 GB of RAM, etc.

Note:

Referring to the jvm.dll has advantages:

Splash screen coming up sooner.
Eclipse.exe in the process list instead of java.exe.
Firewalls: Eclipse wants access to the Internet instead of Java.
Window management branding issues, especially on Windows and Mac.

Dec. 2020, Udo conforms in the comments

From version 4.8 (Photon) an up there was a steady speed gain after each version.
The main platform was optimized every release to load faster, enable more features for the dark theme and to add more features for newer Java versions for the Java development tools.
Especially with-in the last 3 versions the startup time was increased a lot. There should be a significant increase in start-up time with the newest version of Eclipse 2020-12.

In my experience it started a lot faster with each new version.
But: There are still plug-ins which do not follow the new way of using the Eclipse API and are therefore still slow to start.
Since the change to Java 11 as the minimum runtime version starting from Eclipse version 2020-09 at least the core system uses the newer features of the JVM. It is up to the providers of the other plug-ins to upgrade to newer APIs and to use the full power of modern CPUs (e.g. concurrent programming model).

Android – How to lazy load images in ListView in Android

Here's what I created to hold the images that my app is currently displaying. Please note that the "Log" object in use here is my custom wrapper around the final Log class inside Android.

package com.wilson.android.library;

/*
 Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
distributed with this work for additional information
regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
specific language governing permissions and limitations
under the License.
*/
import java.io.IOException;

public class DrawableManager {
    private final Map<String, Drawable> drawableMap;

    public DrawableManager() {
        drawableMap = new HashMap<String, Drawable>();
    }

    public Drawable fetchDrawable(String urlString) {
        if (drawableMap.containsKey(urlString)) {
            return drawableMap.get(urlString);
        }

        Log.d(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "image url:" + urlString);
        try {
            InputStream is = fetch(urlString);
            Drawable drawable = Drawable.createFromStream(is, "src");


            if (drawable != null) {
                drawableMap.put(urlString, drawable);
                Log.d(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "got a thumbnail drawable: " + drawable.getBounds() + ", "
                        + drawable.getIntrinsicHeight() + "," + drawable.getIntrinsicWidth() + ", "
                        + drawable.getMinimumHeight() + "," + drawable.getMinimumWidth());
            } else {
              Log.w(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "could not get thumbnail");
            }

            return drawable;
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            Log.e(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "fetchDrawable failed", e);
            return null;
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Log.e(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "fetchDrawable failed", e);
            return null;
        }
    }

    public void fetchDrawableOnThread(final String urlString, final ImageView imageView) {
        if (drawableMap.containsKey(urlString)) {
            imageView.setImageDrawable(drawableMap.get(urlString));
        }

        final Handler handler = new Handler() {
            @Override
            public void handleMessage(Message message) {
                imageView.setImageDrawable((Drawable) message.obj);
            }
        };

        Thread thread = new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                //TODO : set imageView to a "pending" image
                Drawable drawable = fetchDrawable(urlString);
                Message message = handler.obtainMessage(1, drawable);
                handler.sendMessage(message);
            }
        };
        thread.start();
    }

    private InputStream fetch(String urlString) throws MalformedURLException, IOException {
        DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpGet request = new HttpGet(urlString);
        HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(request);
        return response.getEntity().getContent();
    }
}

Best Answer

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Android – How to lazy load images in ListView in Android

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